She made tea and sipped it, made golden toast and opened a
foreign-looking box of some sort of jelly. While she ate slowly, she
slowly made plans. No, she would not have a stay-all-the-time maid--yes,
she would move her things into the room facing the next-door house.
Until she got tired of watching the sociable thread of smoke, anyway.

It had not occurred yet to Theodosia Baxter that she had not said a word
to Cornelia Dunlap about going on their travels again. When it did
occur, she suddenly laughed out aloud, but softly.

"I forgot what I began that letter _for_! I never mentioned going away
again! And now--I'm glad. Who wants to go off? 'East, west, hame's
best.' Even a hame next door to a little dry-goods box."

Of course there was the promise to let those funny kiddies whitewash
her--

"It's a Baxter promise; don't try to get out of it, Theodosia Baxter,"
she said.

The next noon she saw her dresses dangling from the neighboring
clothesline. They were not successfully dangled; Miss Theodosia liked to
see them hung with symmetry, all alike in a seemly row. The shirtwaists
dangled also in unseemly attitudes. One hung by a single sleeve. But
that was not all--a certain faint suggestion of something worse than
lack of symmetry persisted in Miss Theodosia's mind. They had been
especially travel-stained, soiled; they had still an air of soil and
travel-stain. They didn't look clean!